The Hour of the Donkey

The clothes were too big, not much too big, but no floorwalker in the men's department of Bastable's of Eastbourne would have dared to send a customer out in those clothes and still hope to keep his job when the customer's wife stormed back into the store: they had the same effect that such over-sized clothes always had on their wearer, shrinking him smaller than his own size—just as the clothes he himself was wearing would make him bigger and more awkward than he really was.

'Well?' said Wimpy, brushing dust from one black sleeve.

'Well?'

He was smaller, and he wasn't Wimpy—Wimpy, whom he had only ever seen in well-fitting tweeds, other than in the different uniforms of the regiment, from sharply-pressed battledress to the immaculate mess-kit of the Prince Regent's Own, with its primrose-yellow-and-dove-grey facings—it wasn't that Wimpy, those Wimpys, whom he already knew.

But it was another Wimpy.

'Well?' repeated Wimpy.

Another Wimpy—adam's apple prominent as it never had been before above the too-roomy collar, with its tightly knotted black tie: a Wimpy from behind some desk stacked with invoices and printed forms and bank statements, whom dummy4

he didn't know.

'For God's sake, Harry—'

'You look all right. Except for the feet, Willis.'

'You look . . . bloody marvellous, old boy—feet and all.'

Wimpy looked down at his own feet. 'But my ankle's going to be a problem again, I'm afraid.' He shook his head. 'I don't think I can even get my boot back on again, either.'

'Marvellous?'

Wimpy raised his eyes. 'Ferocious, let's say—if you could just manage to look a bit more frightened and stupid, that would be more proletarian ... But you damn well don't look like a British officer on the run, old boy. In fact, all you need is a cloth cap, and I've got one here . . . It's a bit too clean, but if you rub some mud from your uniform on it—and then some dust from the floor . . . then, you'll do, Harry, you'll do, by God!'

Bastable accepted the cap, half reassured, half choked with distaste. He had never worn a cloth cap in his life, clean or dirty—

'Pull it down a bit more—and push the peak up ... that's it—

marvellous! Bloody marvellous—you look absolutely bang-on now, if you can only get the right expression . .. The only trouble is ... my ... bloody . . . ankle—' Wimpy set his stockinged foot down flat on the floor and gingerly put his weight on it '— aargh! It's no good, Harry—you'll have to go without me. Even with a stick—even if we could find a crutch dummy4

—I shall only hold you back.'

The ankle wasn't the only trouble, thought Bastable savagely: it was only the beginning of their troubles. But now, dressed as he was, he was finally committed to Wimpy beyond any alternative plan of escape. Without Wimpy to speak for him he was helpless. Even if he had to carry the fellow—even if he had to drag him ... Or even—

Or even?

'Sit down, man.'

'It's no good, Harry—'

' Sit down!' Bastable turned back to his own trunk, throwing out the feather boa and pushing the wedding dress aside. The old woman had thrown nothing away—there were garments here which hadn't been stocked on Bastable's shelves for twenty years—but he had caught the feel of something he recognized down there at the bottom—damask table-cloths at worst, but . . . sheets at best—?

Sheets. Fine linen sheets, not common-or-garden cotton!

He commenced ripping the fine linen sheets into strips.

'Harry.. .it's still no good. If you wrap it up like a football I still won't be able to walk more than a dozen yards on it—it's no good—'

'Shut up!' Bastable piled all his bruised self-esteem into the order, and felt the better for it. For this moment at least, if only for this moment, he was in command. For he had seen what Wimpy had missed, or had remembered what Wimpy dummy4

had forgotten.

He was further rewarded with an indrawn hiss of pain as he drew the sock off the foot: the injured ankle was discoloured and hugely swollen, to the point of being misshapen. If it was only a very bad sprain, then Wimpy was lucky. So much for being such a clever motor-cyclist, then!

'This is going to hurt.'

'Tell. .. ahh! . .. Tell me something I don't know ... old boy!'

Wimpy drew a deep breath.

Bastable frowned over his work, trying to remember what he had learned in his first-aid lessons about bandaging. Under there, and over there, and round there—that was it.

'It... still won't.. . keep—keep . . me going more than ... a few yards—' Wimpy was gritting his teeth now; there had to be a broken bone there somewhere, for an uninformed guess.

'I only want a few yards. Just as far as the road.'